Using HWiNFO with Rainmeter

[SilverAzide]

Can you give me the sensor and label name so I can pass it along to Martin?

"Total Host Writes" value seems a little wonky. I'd believe 3 thousand gigs, but not 3 billion gigs.

Code: Select all

12  S.M.A.R.T.: ST32000542AS (5XW1Y42W)  Drive Temperature  23 °C             23 
13  S.M.A.R.T.: ST32000542AS (5XW1Y42W)  Total Host Writes  3,350,495,295 GB  3350495295 
14  S.M.A.R.T.: ST32000542AS (5XW1Y42W)  Total Host Reads   1,282 GB          1282 
15  Drive: ST32000542AS (5XW1Y42W)       Total Activity     0.0 %             0.0 
16  Drive: ST32000542AS (5XW1Y42W)       Read Rate          0.000 MB/s        0.000 
17  Drive: ST32000542AS (5XW1Y42W)       Write Rate         0.000 MB/s        0.000 
18  Drive: ST32000542AS (5XW1Y42W)       Read Total         59 MB             59 
19  Drive: ST32000542AS (5XW1Y42W)       Write Total        0 MB              0 

[SilverAzide]

Sounds ok to me! Thanks so much for following through on this.

I'm noticing some weird behavior with this build, but I can't figure if I'm imagining things or not. I usually run HWiNFO on demand instead of having it auto-start. I notice that when HWiNFO shuts down, it deletes that VSB subkey in the registry. Which is a good thing! But I'd swear that I've rebooted my machine and -- without running the app -- the VSB subkey and all the values reappear. I can't seem to replicate this or even see how it is possible.

Hmm... Perhaps I didn't unload HWiNFO before the shutdown? Maybe HWiNFO isn't zapping the registry subkey on a Windows shutdown, only on an app shutdown. Maybe Martin can check if the app can respond to the shutdown event and delete that key.

The reason this would be important is that when Rainmeter starts and loads skins, having that key present even when HWiNFO isn't running makes the skins think HWiNFO is running and reporting non-zero values. (Perhaps adding a Process measure to watch for the app would work around this.)

A second thing is that if you unplug a drive (for example, but it could be anything that is removed/disabled/off), the VSB entries (and indexes) remain in the registry and the values are frozen at whatever value they last had. If HWiNFO is stopped and restarted, things are cleaned up, but while the app is running things can appear a bit weird. I'm not sure this is a big problem, but I thought I'd mention it. Perhaps Martin can tweak things so zero values are written, the same way Sensors panel works.

[shoek]

I hope the skin authors don't give up on the shared memory HWInfo approach... I purchased a license for HWInfo and am happy to support that project, and my existing skins are working just fine once I enabled the "shared memory" checkbox.

[jsmorley]

I hope the skin authors don't give up on the shared memory HWInfo approach... I purchased a license for HWInfo and am happy to support that project, and my existing skins are working just fine once I enabled the "shared memory" checkbox.

That's perfectly fine. The problem comes for an author who wants to distribute his skin in the community. I mean, you can certainly make it a requirement that the end-user purchase a license for HWiNFO, but to be honest I doubt that would be the most popular thing ever.

[SilverAzide]

I hope the skin authors don't give up on the shared memory HWInfo approach... I purchased a license for HWInfo and am happy to support that project, and my existing skins are working just fine once I enabled the "shared memory" checkbox.

I've thought about having skins that can support both methods. But I guess the question is "Why bother?" Once the Martin works out the kinks, there is no advantage to the "shared memory" approach that I can see. I'm open to suggestions however! Do you see an advantage of one over the other?

The Sidebar/registry approach should be a lot simpler to configure, with no fooling about with bunches of obscure hex numbers. That's one huge advantage I see.

[shoek]

I've thought about having skins that can support both methods. But I guess the question is "Why bother?" Once the Martin works out the kinks, there is no advantage to the "shared memory" approach that I can see. I'm open to suggestions however! Do you see an advantage of one over the other?

The Sidebar/registry approach should be a lot simpler to configure, with no fooling about with bunches of obscure hex numbers. That's one huge advantage I see.

I wonder about registry fragmentation over time if HWInfo is writing to the registry constantly with a snapshot of the sensor values... is it every second, every 5 seconds? I wonder if the registry was intended for that type of use case. I believe the Windows perf counters are stored outside of the registry, perhaps for this reason?

[SilverAzide]

I wonder about registry fragmentation over time if HWInfo is writing to the registry constantly with a snapshot of the sensor values... is it every second, every 5 seconds? I wonder if the registry was intended for that type of use case. I believe the Windows perf counters are stored outside of the registry, perhaps for this reason?

I see, well let me reassure you that this shouldn't be a concern. AT. ALL. The Windows registry is a very sophisticated full-on transactional database (info). The perf counters ARE in the registry.

If you would like a fun test to see for yourself, download RegMon (registry monitor) or ProcMon from SysInternals. Configure it to show all the registry read/writes... there is an absolute firehose of stuff going in and out constantly. Your screen will fill up so fast you can't even out-scroll it.

So I'd rest easy on this count....

[jsmorley]

Martin has released a new 7.01-4415 beta of the HWiNFO software at www.hwinfo.com.

I hope, and think, that this addresses most of the "index" issues that have arisen.

---

If you have been following this saga, and have installed and setup multiple versions of the software, I have a suggestion, just to be be sure the Windows Registry is clean and reflects the current state of things.

What I would do is open the Sensor Settings dialog and go to the HWiNFO Gadget tab. Then click on the very first entry in the list, hold down CTRL and click the last entry in the list. That will select them all.

Then turn OFF "Report value in Gadget". This will "unset" all of them, and basically clear out all the registry entries. Doing this will entirely remove the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\HWiNFO64\VSB registry key.

Get out of HWiNFO and using the tray icon "Quit" the application.

You might want to reboot at this point, to force Windows to physically write all the changes it has in memory to the registry database.

Now with HWiNFO running again, go back to the Sensor Settings page, and turn ON the sensor elements you want to export to Rainmeter. That might just be a handful of them, or you can select them all if you want.

That will repopulate the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\HWiNFO64\VSB key in the registry, using all the latest and greatest values from HWiNFO.

Then just double-check that you have the right sensor element "index" numbers set in your skins.

I'm not saying this process is absolutely necessary, but there have been several changes to how Martin worked at getting the "persistent" state of the indexes to work right, and I personally feel like its time to ensure things are "clean".

[jsmorley]

So the long and the short of the changes Martin made to the interface means this:

Once you have a sensor element selected to be "output" on the Sensor Settings page, the index number that is created will be "persistent", in that if you later remove or disable the hardware element being monitored, the element will disappear from the listing in Sensor Settings, but the index number will be "reserved", and will be "skipped" in the registry, rather than changing the index numbers for everything after it.

If you select a NEW element to be "output, that WILL create a new index number in the order that the sensor elements are in the list, and that means that it WILL change the index numbers for everything after it.

One thing that has come up is that many laptops apparently do not turn on CPU and / or GPU fans until the computer is hot enough to need them. This means that when you first set up this interface between HWiNFO and Rainmeter, those elements might be missing. In fact those elements might come and go as the temperatures of your hardware change. In order to be sure this is all working as it should, I recommend that you go to the Sensor Settings dialog, and under the General tab, turn on "Show all fans (including stopped or not present)". This will ensure that all your fans are properly seen by HWiNFO, even if they are not currently running.

[SilverAzide]

The above note applies to your laptop battery as well if you use HWiNFO to monitor it. If your battery is fully charged, HWiNFO will not "see" a charge rate or estimated time remaining if your battery is fully charged. Briefly unplug your laptop so HWiNFO can see it discharging (it might make a minute), then plug it back in, THEN visit the sensor settings.

This is not new behavior, by the way, it's just that it did not matter before when using the HWiNFO plugin.